Rand Paul Says No Pardon for Snowden—Or the US Government

People always want to cast Edward Snowden as a hero or as a villain, but Rand Paul says he has “mixed feelings.”

“We wouldn’t know what our government has done without Edward Snowden,” he said on stage at the Yahoo Digital Democracy conference in Des Moines, Iowa, today.

At the same time, he said, “There are secrets the government does have to have,” and because Snowden divulged a whole lot of those secrets, the Kentucky senator and presidential hopeful said Snowden should have to face some sort of penalty if and when he returns to the United States.

‘All the people who want to chop his head off and shoot him and hang him, I think that’s a bit excessive.’ Sen. Rand Paul

Paul was quick to add, though, that the punishment ought to be be proportionate to the penalties faced by sitting government leaders like James Clapper, the national director of intelligence who told a Senate hearing in 2013 that the US was not collecting Americans’ data—when, in fact, the National Security Administration was doing just that. Clapper has since defended himself, saying that he misspoke. But he hasn’t convinced Paul, an ardent anti-surveillance advocate, who suggested on stage, as he has in the past, that Clapper and Snowden “could share a cell together.”

But while Paul believes there should be consequences for people like Snowden, he also believes there should be protections. Specifically, he wants to expand whistleblower laws so that they protect contractors like Snowden, who has claimed that he had “no proper channels” to report the NSA’s activity because he wasn’t a full-time government employee.

Paul is one of the few Republican candidates to take such an empathetic approach to Snowden. Both Marco Rubio and Chris Christie have called Snowden a “traitor.” Jeb Bush said he’d offer Snowden “no leniency.” Donald Trump went so far as to say that the US should do to Snowden “what we used to do to traitors”—which is to say, execute him.

“All the people who want to chop his head off and shoot him and hang him,” Senator Paul said on stage, “I think that’s a bit excessive.”

Paul also reiterated his support of thorough encryption and his opposition to government attempts to convince companies like Apple and Google to create backdoors in their technology for governments, a position he defended during the first Republican debate. Paul said he’s not opposed to surveillance altogether, just warrantless surveillance.

Paul is no doubt the one Republican candidate who’s best aligned with major tech companies in their stance on surveillance. But he also voiced other views that resonated with Silicon Valley sentiments. Paul expressed a reluctance to regulate companies like Uber or creating a government safety net for drivers and other on-demand employees. Meanwhile, he celebrated the rise of social media and its ability to raise the profile of fringe ideas like, well, many of his.

“I think it’s an amazing marketplace,” he said. “For people who think outside the box, people who have Libertarian ideas, the Internet has been a great equalizing force.”

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In Iowa, the Door Knock Lives on in the Age of High-Tech Politics

Issie Lapowsky/WIRED

“So, like, what do we say?” Asher Norberg, a willowy 15-year-old with impossibly blonde hair, asks his friend Zachary Ziegenhorn on a sunny morning this past Saturday. They’re standing smack in the middle of the street in a wealthy suburb of Des Moines, where heavy gates enclose immense mansions set on sprawling, snow-covered lawns.

“We say, ‘Hi, my name is Zachary. I just want to make sure you’re coming out to the Caucus. It’s at 6:30,’” Ziegenhorn, a bespectacled 17-year-old in a black pea coat, replies. Ziegenhorn has the distinct honor of turning 18 by election day. Even though he can’t vote in the Iowa Caucus, he says, “I still want to campaign for the candidate who will be best for my future.” And so, as the two teens walk from door-to-door, Ziegenhorn has assumed the role of team leader, urging each Iowan we encounter to turn out to vote for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders tonight.

For teenagers born into the digital age, this analog process felt clumsy at best.

Ziegenhorn, Norberg, and another pal, Dominic Lorino, had driven up the night before from Kansas, subsisting on Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and doughnuts, and arrived at the Sanders Des Moines headquarters for a brief, but inspiring training session on the art of canvassing. “This is their right,” the organizer leading the training had told them. “Hammer that in.”

But before they could inform anyone of their rights, they had to figure out where they were going first. They’d been sent off on their own with a paper map, a stack of Sanders door hangers, and several pieces of paper, printed line by line with names, addresses, and party affiliations of every likely Sanders voter in the neighborhood. For teenagers born into the digital age, this analog process felt clumsy at best.

“I feel like we’re not doing this in the most organized way,” Ziegenhorn lamented, as he scanned each address on his list, checked each house on the block, and back again.

Issie Lapowsky/WIRED

For all the ways technology has transformed modern day political campaigning, the old-fashioned door-knock remains—for the most part at least—unchanged. There are plenty of tech tools out there that purport to streamline the process. And yet, for campaign field organizers tasked with training hundreds if not thousands of volunteers of all ages everyday, sometimes the simplest thing to do is send people out with paper and pencil.

“Certain things will never be replaced because the door-to-door, neighbor-to-neighbor contact has been shown time and time again to be the single most important thing,” says Pinky Weitzman, Sanders’ Iowa digital director, whose hair color matches her name. While the campaign does use apps like MiniVAN, built by the Democratic voter data file company NGP VAN, as well as a volunteer-built app called Field the Bern, Weitzman says sometimes circumventing these tools altogether is the path of least resistance for organizers.

Sometimes the simplest thing to do is send people out with paper and pencil.

Instead, she says the most important role of digital technology in any campaign is “filling in all the gaps to get to the people’s doors we won’t reach.”

That said, a lot of data goes into compiling those voter lists, which, for Democrats at least, are generated from NGP VAN’s central voter file. Because it’s used by nearly every Democratic campaign up and down the ballot, it includes an extensive catalog of Democratic voter preferences, enabling the campaigns to ensure volunteers are knocking on the right doors. The list Ziegenhorn and Norberg received, for instance, included not only voters who have indicated in the past that they support Sanders, but also voters that the data predicts will be most likely to caucus for him.

While this approach may have seemed old school to my teen companions this weekend, for people like Scott Thompson, a 54-year-old Hillary Clinton supporter who was also out canvassing on Saturday, the very existence of these apps represents a revolution in campaigning. “Now I can walk down the sidewalk and have access to information that 15 years ago, I would have had to sit down at a desk and I still wouldn’t have had access to,” he said, referring to the MiniVAN app. “Now, it’s just unbelievable.”

Scott Thompson, 54, of Des Moines, Iowa Issie Lapowsky/WIRED

Some campaigns, particularly the Ted Cruz campaign, are pushing the potential of this technology even farther. Volunteers across the country can download Cruz’s app, developed by the Koch Brothers-backed startup i360. It allows voters to target not just the household, but each individual living in that household. Depending on who answers the door, the app will generate a different script for the canvasser to use, emphasizing whichever issue the data says that person cares most about.

Meanwhile, the Cruz campaign has also been working with a company called Cambridge Analytica, which is developing technology that helps target people not just based on the issues, but based on their psychological profiles. It uses surveys to compile data on how open, extroverted, conscientious, agreeable, and neurotic individuals are, and then helps design messaging that will appeal to that personality type.

“With a full-spectrum conservative like Ted Cruz, there’s a lot to choose from, so I want to make sure to tailor my message to Mr. Smith, but if Mrs. Smith comes to the door, she’s very likely got different issues that motivate her to vote,” says Bryan M. English, ‎Cruz’s Iowa State Director. “[The app] has allowed us to target our phone calling and our door knocking. It’s also allowed us to push data out to people remotely.”

Still, for Cruz supporters like Keith Trullinger of Waukee, Iowa, sometimes this technology just gets in the way of the task at hand. “I don’t like to read the script,” he says. “You could do that, it’s very user friendly, but I tend to just talk.”

Heidi Cruz Promises College Kids That Her Husband Is Legit

We’re on the road this week in Iowa, documenting the run-up to the Iowa Caucuses on February 1 and how technology and innovation are changing longstanding traditions in American politics.

Heidi Cruz Issie Lapowsky/WIRED

“We’ll do as much as we can to bring this event to you,” Heidi Cruz told the group of 24 University of Chicago students seated before her on a large, white tour bus.

All political science and public policy students, they had driven in from Chicago to see what the Iowa Caucus is all about. But when they arrived at Senator Ted Cruz’s rally at the Elwell Family Food Center in Des Moines Sunday night, less than 24 hours before the Caucus would begin, they found the room filled to capacity and an overly stern fire marshall at the door, refusing to let them in.

So, Cruz’s wife Heidi, who has been on the road with the Texas Senator as he campaigns in Iowa, hopped aboard their tour bus to give the students a taste of what they were missing inside. The topic of her brief speech: her husband’s authenticity.

“When you listen to Ted speak, I want to challenge you to hear him,” she said. “He is genuinely himself.”

Of course, Cruz, a Harvard Business School educated investment manager, knew her audience. Polls show that for young people, authenticity is one of the most important qualities in a presidential candidate. But you don’t need a poll to know that. Just look at the rabid, young supporter bases that Donald Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders have amassed, thanks largely to the fact that their straight-talking, at times blustery, style is perceived as authenticity.

Cruz has never had that advantage. On stage at the Republican debate Thursday night, Senator Rand Paul, who is himself, a hit with millennials, even spoke about Cruz’s “authenticity problem.”

Meanwhile, over the weekend, Twitter lit up with messages from Iowans who had received mailers from the Cruz campaign, which appeared to be official government documents telling them they had committed a voting violation by not voting in the past. It said they could caucus on Monday to improve their scores.

Iowa’s Secretary of State quickly denounced the mailer as deceptive, casting further doubt about the honesty of the campaign.

Without the appearance of authenticity on his side, Cruz hasn’t gained as much traction with young voters as Trump has. Instead, his surge in Iowa has been driven largely by the state’s evangelical and conservative religious groups. Which may be why, as some would-be rally attendees shivered outside in the cold, the Senator urged his supporters to pray. “Please, continue this awakening,” he bellowed, knees bent, one hand clenched in a fist. “Continue the spirit of revival. Awaken the body of Christ to pull us back from the abyss.”

Inside the event space, that line received a resounding round of applause. But on the bus, Mrs. Cruz took a more pragmatic approach, stressing what she says is her husband’s longstanding commitment to defend the Constitution above all else.

“One thing I love about Ted is, because of his constitutional grounding and his very, very fine understanding of that incredible document, Ted is able to run this race genuinely on who he is as an economic, social, and national security conservative,” she said. “He will govern and is going to be able to govern exactly on what he promises to do, in a way that allows all of us to live in freedom.”

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We’re on the road this week in Iowa, documenting the run-up to the Iowa Caucuses on February 1 and how technology and innovation are changing longstanding traditions in American politics.

Math is hard (for some of us, at least). Especially the math that goes into the Iowa Caucus, where Iowans use formulas, scribbled out on scratch paper, to determine how many delegates each Democratic presidential candidate will ultimately receive.

It’s a clumsy process, the kind Silicon Valley would never stand for, and this year, it seems, neither are the Democratic campaigns. The Bernie Sanders campaign has already announced its own Iowa Caucus app, and now, Hillary Clinton’s team is doing the same with the launch of its new app, called Reporter, for Caucus night.

Reporter essentially does all the math that so-called precinct captains would ordinarily have to do mentally or by hand, from calculating how many votes each candidate must get in order to be considered viable to determining how many delegates each candidate would be awarded, based on how many Caucus-goers support them.

If one of the candidates doesn’t meet the viability threshold—meaning they don’t have the support of 15 percent of the people in the room—the Caucus-goers must realign. At that point, Reporter gives the precinct captain recommendations to inform their strategy.

If, for instance, Clinton got five delegates during the first round, Bernie Sanders got two and Martin O’Malley got two, the app would calculate how many supporters the Clinton camp needs to lure away from the other candidates in order to secure another delegate.

Now, can you see why an app might be useful?

Once the second alignment is complete, the captain submits the final count, which is automatically sent to the campaign’s Des Moines headquarters. In many ways, the tool is similar to an app Microsoft developed for the Caucus chairs, who are different from the precinct captains. Caucus chairs from both parties will use data collected by the Microsoft app to report the results back to the state party headquarters.

And, if any snags should occur throughout the night, the app includes a help section where precinct captains can send a message or call the campaign’s Des Moines headquarters directly.

With its sleek, colorful design, the Reporter app was clearly heavily influenced by Clinton’s chief technology officer Stephanie Hannon, who was a director of product management at Google before joining the campaign. But though the user interface is dead simple, the campaign has still been spending a substantial amount of time training their precinct captains throughout the state in how to use it.

The goal of Reporter, says Kane Miller, regional organizing director for Polk County, Iowa, is to make what can be a “wild and wooly” process a whole lot simpler. The app, he says, will give precinct captains some much needed time back. “This is a tool to help you do the things you already know how to do faster,” he says. So, instead of spending time on calculations, he explains, “you can spend those 2 and a half minutes talking to someone in your corner.”

The campaign isn’t requiring anyone to use the app. If they want to stick with pencil and paper, so be it. But some Clinton supporters, like Scott Thompson, 54, are eager to see the app in action. “It’ll just make life easy.”

A Night With Bernie Sanders, the Politician Turned Internet Icon

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks during a campaign rally at the University of Iowa, on Saturday, Jan. 30, 2016. Evan Vucci/AP

We’re on the road this week in Iowa, documenting the run-up to the Iowa Caucuses on February 1 and how technology and innovation are changing longstanding traditions in American politics.

It’s ok to say “fuck” at a Bernie Sanders rally. But it’s better if you sing it, like Jill Sobule did on stage at Sanders’ indie-star-studded rally at the University of Iowa on Saturday night.

When they say they want our America back, Our America back, Our America back, When they say they want our America back, Well, what the fuck do they mean?

Sobule and her acoustic guitar kicked off the show with a lyrical dig at right-wing opponents. Then, she asked the nearly 5,000 people gathered—most of them college students, all of them #feelingthebern—to sing along, and so, from the college girl in the black Bernie t-shirt perched on a guard rail to the middle aged man with the sleepy toddler swaying on his shoulders, sing along, they did.

It was as close as we may ever get to knowing what Sesame Street for Democratic Socialists might be like.

Sanders would be joined on stage that night by real rock stars. And yet the roar of the crowd was twice as deafening at the mention of the gruff septuagenarian’s name.

Sobule was a hit with the crowd, but she wasn’t the reason they turned out that night, or the reason that the green cinderblock field house was filled to capacity, leaving a labyrinthine line of students on the sidewalk waiting, just hoping, to get inside. The reason they came was to see Sanders, the politician turned unlikely 74-year-old Internet icon, whose once long-shot campaign has risen to viability over the last few months on the backs of the millions of tweets, Reddit stories, and Facebook posts that his predominantly young fans have shared.

Sanders would be joined on stage that night by real rock stars, like Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend, and Josh Hutcherson of Hunger Games fame. And yet the roar of the crowd was twice as deafening at the mention of the gruff septuagenarian’s name.

‘This is so easy!’

But of course, like any headliner worth his salt, the man of the hour wouldn’t step on stage for several more hours. First, the audience would be treated to more opening acts. There was identical twin comedy duo Kenny and Keith Lucas who both said they support Bernie because, “He’s dope.”

There was Hutcherson, his 5’7″ frame barely clearing the podium, who described Sanders as “adorable” and praised his consistency throughout his long life in public office. (Hillary Clinton would no doubt disagree.) Each compliment he paid Sanders was met with a resounding cheer, prompting even Hutcherson (friggin’ Peeta Mellark, people) to marvel: “It’s awesome, this is so easy!”

‘It’s almost spiritual at this point.’ Jacob Lackey, Sanders supporter

There was Mark Foster, lead singer of the band Foster the People; and Dr. Cornel West of Princeton University, who delivered a short sermon on Sanders; and Koenig, who was joined on stage by members of another band, Dirty Projectors; and the University’s own acapella group, the Hawkapellas.

“Thank god we have YouTube. We can go back and watch Bernie’s speeches,” Koenig said between songs, “1991. What’s he saying? Same thing he’s saying today. 2002, saying the same thing he’s saying today. And it’s not boring. It’s amazing.”

Each act emphasized the feel-goodsy optimism of Sanders’ platforms and reminded the Iowans in attendance that Monday night is Caucus night, and that none of this matters, if you don’t vote, as I’m-not-quite-sure-which Lucas brother pointed out.

During breaks, videos about caucusing played on large overhead screens. One featured actor Justin Long, who warned, “Don’t be a Caucus block-us.” Another, produced by the Sanders campaign, explained the somewhat complex process of caucusing. On YouTube, that video has been viewed more than 100,000 times.

The goal of this night was not simply to persuade young Iowans to caucus for Sanders but to convince them to caucus at all, and to become so downright in love with him that they’d try to convince their friends to caucus for Sanders, too. The Sanders campaign is hoping a massive youth turnout on Monday night will help secure his win, just as it did for President Obama in 2008. At least here, the affection ran thick. When asked what “feeling the Bern” means to him, 28-year-old correctional officer Jacob Lackey said, “It’s almost spiritual at this point.”

It’s the line they’d been waiting all night for, like the opening chords of ‘Born in the USA’ at a Springsteen concert.

Finally, hours after the doors first opened, the main attraction stepped on stage to give the people what they wanted. Sanders started off with an old classic, saying that this campaign is not just about electing the President of the United States. “It is about a political revolution,” he said, the crowd drowning him out with their cheers. It’s the line they’d been waiting all night for, like the opening chords of “Born in the USA” at a Springsteen concert.

Sanders went on to play all the hits: “Billionaires are able to run elections,” “Climate change is real,” “Healthcare is a right for all people, not a privilege,” “Take marijuana out of the Controlled Substance Act,” and more. But perhaps his biggest hit was what he did not say: he didn’t once attack Hillary Clinton, who is still just barely beating him in the Iowa polls, a tendency his supporters have grown to admire.

As the night was coming to a close, Sanders’ opening acts looked on adoringly from a side stage as he talked about how political pundits doubt the commitment of young people and accuse them of showing up to rallies, but not voting when it counts. “How would you like to make the pundits look dumb on election night?” It was a challenge the audience seemed more than willing to take on.

Sanders left the stage soon after with his wife, Jane, by his side, only to pop back up on the side stage minutes later. For his encore (What? You thought there wouldn’t be an encore?) Sanders would join Koenig and company for a singalong of “This Land Is Your Land.” By Sunday morning, video of the jam session had gone viral.

On Clinton Campaign Trail, Astronaut Mark Kelly Talks Smart Guns

We’re on the road this week in Iowa, documenting the run-up to the Iowa Caucuses on February 1 and how technology and innovation are changing longstanding traditions in American politics.

Astronaut Mark Kelly says preparing for the Iowa Caucus is a bit like preparing for a rocket launch.

“It takes months and months even years of preparation to get to that point where you ignite the solid rocket boosters on that space shuttle and build an incredible amount of momentum to complete this mission,” he said, speaking to Hillary Clinton supporters in the candidate’s Des Moines, Iowa headquarters today, alongside his wife, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.

Apt as that metaphor may be, Kelly and Giffords weren’t in Des Moines today to talk about rockets. Instead, they’re traveling through Iowa this weekend to voice their support for Clinton’s stance on gun control. They joined Clinton on stage earlier today, at a rally in Ames, Iowa, where the Democratic presidential contender spoke out about gun violence in America, asking, “What is wrong with us? How can we continue to ignore the toll that this is taking on our children and our country?”

It’s an issue Clinton is increasingly using to distinguish herself from Sanders, who in the past, supported a bill that granted firearm manufacturers legal immunity. Now, however, Sanders is set to co-sponsor a bill that would repeal that immunity.

Neither Kelly nor Giffords, who survived a gunshot wound in a 2011 attack in Tuscon, Arizona that left six dead, mentioned Sanders directly. But Kelly did address politicians who he says are, “more interested in supporting the gun lobby and powerful corporate interests than they are in doing what’s right to keep our families safer from gun violence.”

Kelly told WIRED that he believes smart guns have an important role to play in stemming gun violence in this country; he cited recent studies that show that more than half of gun owners support the sale of guns that include technology that would only allow their owners to fire them. He acknowledged, however, that the opposition to that technology from the National Rifle Association has been fierce. (The organization says it doesn’t oppose smart guns themselves but any effort to prohibit the sale of firearms that don’t include smart gun tech.)

“There have been a couple times that people have tried to sell smart guns that the gun store was almost put out of business,” he said. “I think the Department of Justice should pay more attention to those things and consider anti-trust actions against organizations that are trying to use unacceptable practices against businesses.”

But gun control isn’t the only topic on which the former NASA astronaut and Clinton see eye-to-eye. “She believes in science and technology and innovation, and that is so imporant to me,” he says. “I have a very hard time with anybody who is promoting themselves to lead this country that does not believe in science.”

Clinton’s Last Minute Iowa Pitch Is All About the Economy

We’re on the road this week in Iowa, documenting the run-up to the Iowa Caucuses on February 1 and how technology and innovation are changing longstanding traditions in American politics.

During last night’s presidential debate, the Republican candidates on stage, along with the Fox News moderators invoked the term “ISIS” a whopping 40 times. Various forms of the word “terror”—terrorist, terrorism—were used nearly 30 times. The term “jobs,” by contrast, came up just six times.

The opposite was true as Hillary Clinton delivered an address before a group of Iowans today at Grand View University in Des Moines. Just days before the Iowa caucus, the former Secretary of State, who often touts her foreign policy chops, chose to put jobs and American incomes at the center of the discussion, with only a passing mention of the threat of global terrorism.

As primary season closes in, the divide between the issues each party is choosing to prioritize is widening.

“There’s a big difference between being on the Democratic side and the Republican candidates,” she said, and, well, we can’t disagree.

As primary season closes in, the divide between the issues each party is choosing to prioritize is widening, with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Clinton zeroing in on issues like wages and healthcare, as Republican candidates double down on issues related to immigration and foreign threats.

Much of Clinton’s plan to increase employment hinges on modernizing the country’s crumbling infrastructure, investing in clean energy technology, and encouraging businesses to invest in and train workers in new manufacturing skills. On that last point, the former first lady mentioned a visit to Black Hawk Community College, where she encountered a giant 3D printer. (In reality, it was a tech training center in Waterloo, Iowa. According to The New York Times, Clinton muddled the details.)

“They bought the biggest 3D printer in North America, because they’re thinking about the future,” Clinton said. “They’re training people how to use that. These advanced manufacturing jobs, they’re going to take a lot of skill, and we need to be ready.”

Throughout all of her speeches, Clinton has reserved the most criticism for her Republican counterparts. But as the Democratic race in Iowa gets tighter and tighter, she pointedly acknowledged today what she believes are the stark differences between herself and Sanders, namely, their approaches to healthcare.

Clinton has repeatedly framed Sanders’ Medicare-for-all proposal as overly idealistic and impossible to pull off. She clings to this issue because, while the distinction between Republican and Democratic priorities may be clear, the distinction between Clinton’s proposals and Sanders’ is far more blurry. And so, in her final pitches in Iowa this weekend, Clinton is putting a philosophical choice before voters: pragmatism or idealism?

“I’m not running on just telling you what you want to hear,” she said, in an obvious nod to Sanders. “I’m running on what I think I can do.”

RIP Political Lawn Signs, Digital Ads Killed Them

A yard sign for U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stands in a snow bank in Ames, Iowa, on January 12, 2016. Scott Morgan/REUTERS

We’re on the road this week in Iowa, documenting the run-up to the Iowa Caucuses on February 1 and how technology and innovation are changing longstanding traditions in American politics.

A vestige of 20th century political campaigning—the yard sign—is going the way of the fax machine, and Edward Kimmel knows who to blame: the Internet.

Kimmel is a bankruptcy attorney and part-time photographer who’s been shooting political events and memorabilia for years. Back in 2008, he traveled to 14 states, following President Obama on the campaign trail.

But when he got to Iowa this week, he noticed something had changed. The political signs and bumper stickers that used to clutter his camera rolls are virtually non-existent. In fact, since arriving on Tuesday, Kimmel says, he’s only spotted five bumper stickers total. That’s because technology has enabled candidates to forgo blanket campaigning for the fabled targeted campaign.

‘Years ago, these yards would have been full of signs.’

“Since the first Obama campaign, everybody who’s gone to campaign manager school since then has been told it’s all about targeted canvassing and targeted phone banking,” Kimmel says, his two homemade Hillary Clinton signs flapping in the the bitter cold wind outside a Clinton campaign rally at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa today.

“If I go to the campaign and ask them where I should go with my signs, they say, ‘That’s really hard to say. Why don’t you grab a phone and get on the phone bank with us?'”

But he’s not the only one who’s noticed the change. “The technology is getting rid of them,” said another Clinton supporter, who asked to be identified only as Fred, as he waited in line for the rally. “If you look around there are very few campaign signs. Years ago, these yards would have been full of signs.”

Kimmel, for one, is worried about the impact this could have on voter turnout. After all, while targeting may be effective, it requires having a central database of people who ought to be targeted to begin with. That means those people have either signed up with a campaign on their own, voted in the past, or taken some kind of political action to get them on a list. Then, campaign’s algorithms go to town determining who’s most persuadable on that list, and positively bombard them with ads, emails, phone calls, and door knocks.

“I think it’s not sustainable,” Kimmel says. “I understand that the targeted canvassing and targeted phone banking is the deal, but I think that we ought to be asking everybody to vote and shine our light. So I do.”

Twitter Will Bring #Paris Questions to Tonight’s Debate

Then One/WIRED

When news of the terrorist attacks in Paris broke yesterday, many of us who were groping for understanding, or just basic information, turned to Twitter. We saw streaming updates from journalists on the ground; hashtags offering Parisians shelter in the chaos; Periscoped live-streams of the aftermath; and heavy-hearted messages of solidarity from people around the world.

Now, as the Democratic presidential candidates take the stage tonight in what will no doubt be the most poignant debate of this election season, Twitter is working with CBS News to bring users’ questions and concerns to the very people who would be tasked with protecting the country as commander-in-chief.

CBS has already acknowledged that last night’s horror in Paris will feature prominently during tonight’s debate in Des Moines, Iowa. And Twitter, which is sponsoring tonight’s debate, will play a crucial role in bringing the rest of us into that conversation.

Twitter has become the modern day spin room during debate nights.

“On Twitter, we’ve seen a lot of the questions shifting over to Paris in the last 24 hours,” Christopher Isham, vice president of CBS News, told a group of reporters gathered at Drake University, where the debate will be held. “We’ll take that into account and expect some of the questions to be used.”

In many ways, Twitter has become the modern day spin room during debate nights, crafting the narrative before traditional TV networks and campaigns have the chance. That’s why Twitter decided to sponsor the debate to begin with, says Sean Evins, Twitter’s partnership manager for government and elections, because Twitter is uniquely positioned to show what people are talking about minute-to-minute and second-to-second.

Already, the company had built tools for CBS to demonstrate which candidates and topics were being talked about most on the platform and help moderators find questions coming through during the debate for the candidates. “We’ve never been able to say to candidates, ‘This question was asked seconds ago,’ and that’s what we’ll be able to do here,” Evins says.

More Election 2016

After the attacks in Paris, Twitter’s team worked through the night to ensure its tools will be able to help the moderators uncover conversation about Paris, along with the existing topics the team was already tracking, like health care and the economy. In a moment of so much grief and confusion, it will be particularly important to elevate the voices of average Americans in the debate.

But that is also what will make tonight’s debate so tricky for both the candidates and the moderators to navigate. As we grapple both online and off with the tragedy, the last thing any of us wants to see are the country’s leaders attacking each other on stage. At the same time, the night also presents an opportunity for the candidates to demonstrate leadership in a time of crisis.

The moderators themselves will have to strike a careful balance between respecting the situation in Paris while also challenging the candidates on issues unrelated to the attacks. Isham emphasized this morning that though the Paris attacks will be a topic of conversation, the debate will not focus exclusively on foreign affairs.

That means after the candidates have offered up their prayers for the victims and their plans for how to cope with the attacks, at a certain point tonight, the moderators will decide they’re ready to move on. But will we?

Yes, the NSA Worried About Whether Spying Would Backfire

It can be tough to imagine what exactly was going through the minds of National Security Agency officials when they decided they could secretly collect American citizens’ private data in bulk. On stage at Yahoo’s Digital Democracy conference in Des Moines, Iowa this week, the NSA’s former general counsel, Matt Olsen, attempted to explain.

A common misconception, Olsen says, is that the NSA began collecting the data without giving any thought to how controversial the program would be if word got out. “For all the time I worked on all of these issues, this was a constant discussion,” Olsen says. “How do we calibrate what we’re trying to do for the country with how to protect civil liberties and privacy?”

Unfortunately, judging by the outrage Edward Snowden’s revelations inspired across the country—including among government officials like Senator Rand Paul, who spoke at the conference earlier that day—it seems the NSA didn’t calibrate quite correctly. Gregory T. Nojeim, a senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology who joined Olsen on stage said as much. “I don’t doubt that there were discussions,” he said, “I just think they came out the wrong way, and the reason things are coming out the wrong way is because of excess secrecy.”

But the program would never have worked without a high degree of secrecy, Olsen said. For proof, he pointed to the fact that after Snowden uncovered the NSA’s activity, the NSA “lost coverage of terrorists.”

“We saw people we were targeting with NSA surveillance stop using communication at all,” he says. “We saw them go to different service providers. We saw them go to uses of encryption, different ways in which they were reacting to what they were seeing.”

The biggest problem, Olsen says, was not only that Snowden’s revelations exposed the data collection, but that it also exposed so many other details about how and where the NSA operates. “How it conducts surveillance, who it work with, where it is overseas, exactly how it’s able to target terrorists, all of which—the vast majority of which—have nothing to do with US citizens’ privacy and civil liberties,” Olsen said. “It shouldn’t be a surprise that it’s made the job harder for the intelligence community.”

Black Voters Are Way More Optimistic About Tech in Politics

There’s no denying that technology is playing a bigger role in politics than ever before. Whether that’s a good or bad thing for the electoral process, though, is still subject to debate.

Now, a new report released by Yahoo suggests that the way you perceive the Internet’s role in politics may have a lot to do with your race.

The report, which is being released today in advance of Yahoo’s Digital Democracy conference in Des Moines, Iowa, shows a deep divide between how white voters and minority voters view the potential for tech to improve political inclusion. Black voters are the most optimistic about its impact, while white voters are the most pessimistic.

To compile the report, Yahoo partnered with Harris Poll, which surveyed 5,188 registered voters of all backgrounds. The goal was to better understand how technology has changed Americans’ participation in the political process as well as Americans’ views on tech issues such as cybersecurity and privacy.

What they found was that while 83 percent of voters overall agreed that the Internet spreads misinformation on politics, minority voters were much more likely to say that it’s also an important tool of inclusion.

For instance, 74 percent of black voters and 73 percent of Hispanic voters said that social media has “made political discussion more representative of what Americans really think.” Sixty percent of white voters said the same. Another 78 percent of Asian voters and 77 percent of black voters reported that tech has made politics “more inclusive,” compared to 67 percent of white voters. Meanwhile, 55 percent of black voters said they believe that tech makes minority groups “more influential” in politics. Just 45 percent of white voters said the same.

Tech Direction

Perhaps because of this belief in technology, minority groups were also more likely to say that the country is on the right path, with 59 percent of black respondents saying the country is “going in the right direction.” A whopping 71 percent of white Americans surveyed, by contrast, said the US is “going off in the wrong track.”

This positive shift in perception among minority groups is understandable. Now groups that have for so long been underrepresented and shut out of the political process—which is, let’s face it, dominated by white men—have the power to organize and advocate not only instantly, but at scale. On Facebook and Twitter, people don’t need the blessing of the traditional power and financial structures that run Washington to push their issues to the forefront of the political conversation.

What’s more, now that those tech companies are sponsoring debates, lobbying, and becoming major news hubs in their own right, they can use their troves of data on what users care about to amplify those conversations even more. Case in point: one major reason that #BlackLivesMatter came up at the Democratic debate recently was because Facebook provided CNN with data that said race was among the most discussed issues on Facebook in the months leading up to the debate.

Candidates would be wise to use the information in this report to tailor their digital outreach strategy. About 55 percent of the black voters surveyed said that they’d like to engage candidates on social media, compared to only 30 percent of white voters. The survey also showed that Hispanic voters are the most likely to view candidates’ videos, read their blogs, look at their photos on social media, and attend in-person events. It’s this kind of eagerness to engage that campaigns are constantly searching for. They would do well to start talking to the communities that want to talk back.